A recent conversation with my wife over some delicious Irish beers at Park Pizza had me doing some reflecting on the topic of which sports league is the greatest and how they all stack up against one another. Great players make a name for themselves by competing against the best, and great leagues provide that in Spades. As someone who loves sports as a whole, I think all of the leagues referenced in this article are great in their own unique ways. But just like how a movie buff or music lover or tv show binger has their own personal preferences when it comes to genres, so do sports fans and so do I. And that's exactly what this is: my personal list. I'm not saying it's the right list, it's just what I find most enjoyable to follow. So here are my personal preferences, as well as why I think each is special.
Did Not Make Cut: Olympics, NASCAR, Major League Soccer, Overseas Soccer Leagues, Horse Racing, Boxing, Ultimate Fighting
First I wanted to briefly acknowledge everything that didn't make my top 10.
The Olympics is a great event that uses sports to bring the globe together and a time where I find myself watching sports I wouldn't otherwise watch like gymnastics, swimming, track & field, figure skating, beach volleyball, and others while still featuring some of the more popular sports like basketball, hockey, soccer, golf, and tennis. I tend to prefer summer to winter, but this is a fun event when it happens.
NASCAR is something I actually used to watch in middle school and even had a video game for, but haven't really followed since. I can only watch so many miles of super fast cars turning left. But I can see why it appeals to others and the last few laps of a big race can be very exciting.
Major League Soccer (MLS) has always been a struggle to get behind knowing that unlike the NFL/NBA/MLB/NHL, in soccer the world's best players tend to play over in Europe, largely because they can make way more money playing there.
European soccer has a decent following here in the US but a massive one overseas, as soccer globally is the world's most popular sport. It's just a bit hard for me personally to keep up with so many different leagues and the matches occurring at odd times here in the US.
My dad often referred to the Kentucky Derby as "the most exciting two minutes in sports", and it's hard to disagree. Celebrities flock to the event, often showing off their fashion (especially those fun oversized floppy hats with flowers on them) and spectators sip fancy cocktails and gamble on the horses. Outside of the Derby, the other two notable races were the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes. If a horse wins all 3 that is known as the triple crown. Only 13 horses have accomplished this feat, and only two since 1978.
Combat sports were never really my thing but I do prefer boxing to ultimate fighting. It's surprisingly strategic and requires great endurance, both to continually throw punches and because of the toll it takes on their bodies.
Now that that's out of the way, onto the top 10!
#10. College Baseball
College Baseball makes my top 10 because I enjoy watching the tournament every year when it happens in late May & June. It's their version of March Madness with a 64 team field and a double elimination format. FSU has never won the College World Series (the national title for baseball) but almost every year they are in the tournament. They missed the tournament for the first time since the 70's last season, but are off to a very good start this season (20-3, ranked #17 in the country).
There are two main reasons College Baseball ranks at the bottom of my top 10. Firstly, I typically do not watch whatsoever until the tournament starts. The regular season begins in mid February so this means the first 3.5 months the sport is played I typically do not watch (but occasionally check scores/standings). The second reason is because several of the best high school baseball players typically skip college and head straight to the MLB minor leagues. For reference, last season if we look at the first round, there were 28 first round picks, 17 of them were college players and 11 were high school graduates. In other years this number has been more in favor of the high school players.
Despite these flaws, I really do enjoy watching the tournament and can't wait until the day FSU claims their first College World Series title.
#9. Major League Baseball (MLB)
Baseball isn't my favorite among the major sports, largely due to it's slow pace, but let me begin by listing the things I do enjoy about it.
I like that it's incredibly data driven and strategic. I like that each stadium is unique unlike other sports. I think it requires incredible coordination to hit, and determine in the blink of an eye how fast a ball is moving and where it will end up. And it takes a great deal of muscle to turn around a 95-100 mph fastball and drive it 400 feet. I think infielders need to have cat like reflexes to field balls after they come off of bats at ridiculously high exit velocities. I like that the length of the season (162 games) forces teams to rely on depth and ensures that the most complete teams are the ones that go far. It has a rich history which includes things like the Curse of the Bambino (Boston Red Sox 86 year World Series Curse) and the Curse of the Billy Goat (Chicago Cubs 108 year World Series Curse) and some deep rooted rivalries like Yankees/Red Sox and Dodgers/Giants. And when it comes to All-Star Weekend I really enjoy watching the Home Run Derby.
But perhaps the most important part is that baseball represented the identity of a nation, and for a while was America's greatest pastime. Attending a live ball game was an experience. You were supposed to get a big hot dog and some peanuts, and try to catch a foul ball, and sing "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" during the 7th inning stretch.
But it would also be fair to say there is a lot I dislike about it.
Firstly, even though I cited liking the fact that the length of the season requires teams to have good depth. I find the regular season to be painfully long. Games begin in late March and playoffs don't start until early October. This makes it hard to get invested when sitting down and watching a regular season game because each individual game holds less meaning when there are so many, as opposed to a sport like football where the small number makes each one very meaningful in a playoff race.
Speaking of playoffs, one of baseball's biggest flaws is having it's playoffs and World Series take place in October/November. If the season had been structured in such a way where the playoffs began in July and went until late August, I genuinely think viewership and investment would be way higher as it would not conflict with football season or the beginning of basketball and hockey season in mid October.
There's also the egregious number of times and ways players have tried to cheat the system, from steroid abuse, to betting on games, to putting cork in bats to increase hitting power, to using sticky substance for pitchers to increase grip on the baseball.
Lastly, there's the issue of not having a salary cap. The NFL/NBA/NHL all utilize a salary cap, i.e. a specific budget that teams are allowed to spend on player payroll. The MLB does not do this and basically just says the owners are allowed to spend however much they want out of pocket on their players. For reference, the team with the highest 2024 payroll is the New York Mets, who spent $300 million on players, while the cheapest is the Oakland Athletics, who only spent $48 million.
The pro version of the sport ranks firmly ahead of the college version because the talent level is much higher and I do watch regular season games and attending a game in person can be a fun experience with the picturesque stadiums, creative food options, and deep-rooted tradition. That being said, I would still watch football/basketball/hockey/a major golf tournament/a major tennis tournament ahead of it any day of the week.
#8. World Cup
Perhaps this is cheating a bit since the event only happens every 4 years but when it does I watch more soccer in that couple months than I do in the years in between World Cups. The World Cup is a cultural phenomenon that brings teams from all continents together to play the globe's most popular sport and determine which country sits at the top.
In previous years, 32 countries would qualify for the World Cup, and would be divided into 8 groups of 4 teams each. Teams would play everyone within their group once and then the top two teams from each group, meaning 16 teams in total, would advance to the "Knockout stage", otherwise known as the playoffs. The last World Cup was in 2022 and was won by Argentina.
In 2026, the United States will host the World Cup for the first time since 1994. The format is also changing and expanding. There will now be 48 teams, split into 16 groups of 3, and the top two from each group will advance to a 32 team Knockout round. The United States has never won the World Cup. The closest they came was all the way back at the very first World Cup in 1930 when they reached the semi-finals and lost to Argentina. Since then, the Americans have only gotten past the Round of 16 once, when they reached the quarterfinals in 2002 and lost to Germany. The European teams, plus Argentina and Brazil, are typically the heavy favorites to win the event.
#7. Tennis
#7. Tennis
An underrated sport to play and watch, Tennis checks in at #7 on my list. It's fast paced and requires a great deal of stamina and endurance, as well as consistent technique and good footwork.
Similar to golf, Tennis is comprised of four tournaments more important than all the others, known as "majors". They are Wimbledon, the US Open, the French Open, and the Australian Open. What's also neat about these is that they are played on different surfaces. The US and Australian are played on hard court, which is the surface most commonly seen at any local outdoor court. Hardcourt typically offers intermediate ball speed and consistent bounces. The French is played on clay, a surface that slows the ball and players down and requires them to slide from side to side when tracking down a ball. And then Wimbledon is played on grass, a speed-based surface where the ball accelerates fastest.
Winning all 4 of these tournaments is completing what's known as the "Grand Slam". 8 men and 10 women have completed this over the course in their careers. Only 4 women and 2 men have won all 4 in a row, most recently Sarena Williams who actually did it twice, once in 2002-03 and once in 2014-15.
While the women have had a plethora of American major winners in recent times, a US male has not won a major since 2003 when Andy Roddick won the US Open. The 21-year drought has become a big storyline in American tennis to see what male will ascend and become the one to finally bring a major championship back to the States. Currently there are 5 different American men, all 26 or younger, ranked inside of the top 26 of the world rankings: Taylor Fritz, Ben Shelton, Francis Tiafoe, Tommy Paul, and Sebastian Korda. American women also hold 5 of the top 23 spots, most notably Coco Gauff, who is only 20 years old but ranked #3 in the world and won the US Open last year.
#6. PGA Tour
From here on up, we are now getting into the sports I truly enjoy watching. Golf was something as a kid I never thought I'd enjoy watching, but as an adult I 100% see the appeal.
Firstly, the courses are aesthetically picture-esque and breathtaking. Whether it's Augusta National, an oceanfront course at a resort, or a historic course in Scotland or Ireland, golf courses come in a variety of shapes and sizes and the architects of the courses have a lot of freedom to determine not just the difficulty but also things like landscapes, vegetation, backdrops, water features, etc.
Secondly, the game is challenging and requires a great deal of strategy. Each hole provides unique challenges for a golfer on how to approach. A golfer must decide what club to use, how passive/aggressive to be, they must read the wind, they must read the slopes of the green, they must navigate obstacles like bunkers, water hazards, and trees. All for a little ball less than 2 inches in diameter to travel hundreds of yards to be hit into a tiny hole only 4.25 inches in diameter.
The PGA tour gathers the best players in the world to compete across the best courses in the world. Like Tennis, Golf has 4 tournaments, known as "majors", that stand above all the rest. These are the Masters, the US Open, the British Open, and the PGA Championship. The latter 3 rotate locations every year while the Masters is always played at Augusta National.
Only 5 golfers have won all 4 majors over the course of their careers, and only Tiger Woods won all 4 consecutively. Jack Nicklaus has won the most ever with 18. Tiger is currently sitting at 15, he reached 14 back in 2009 and seemed poised to break Nicklaus' long standing record, however physical and personal problems plagued his career and he has only won 1 major over the last 15 years.
Three other active golfers are one major away from joining the exclusive group of those who have won all 4. Rory McIlroy needs the Masters, Jordan Spieth needs a PGA Championship, and Phil Mickelson needs a US Open. Mickelson's is less likely, he's 53 and well past his prime, but Spieth and McIlroy will have several attempts to complete theirs. Other notable golfers with multiple majors include Brooks Koepka (5), Scottie Scheffler (2), and John Rahm (2).
#5. College Basketball
I'll be honest, unless FSU is really good, I don't start following until after the Super Bowl. That being said, March Madness is still a one of a kind event that lives up to the hype. Every year, friends, families, and coworkers alike are brought together by brackets to compete every year in pools that truly anyone can win.
In most professional sports, a best-of-7 series is played. Playing this many games allows a teams strengths and weaknesses to be fleshed out, and more often than not the stronger, more consistent team prevails. Such is not the case with March Madness. Winning the tournament requires winning 6 consecutive win-or-go-home games. It takes literal perfection with no room for error. One off-night, or one game where your opponent shoots lights out, and your season could be over just like that. This yields crazy upsets and makes the tournament nearly impossible to predict, even for the biggest basketball experts. The odds of filling out a perfect bracket (which has never happened) are 1 in 9.2 quintillion. For reference, winning the Powerball, birthing sextuplets, being eaten by a shark, and being struck by lightning multiple times are all more likely.
We had a pleasure of attending a football-first school, but for other universities like Kentucky, Duke, Uconn, North Carolina, Kansas, Arizona, and Gonzaga (just to name a few) basketball is everything. But no matter what university you attended, the Big Dance is thrilling and making a run to the Sweet 16, Elite 8, or Final 4 is fun to watch.
For the record, FSU has only reached the Final 4 once, all the way back in 1972. They lost in the national championship game that year.
#4. NHL
Funny enough I didn't follow the NHL before moving to Tampa in 2017, but having now experienced living in a hockey town and winning two Stanley Cups during my time there I am now an avid lifelong follower.
Hockey is without a shadow of a doubt one of the best sports. It's fast-paced, extremely physical, and exciting. The majority of games are 1 goal games and the majority of playoff series last 6 or 7 games. Scoring a goal takes work and when it does happen the arena absolutely erupts.
The Stanley Cup has become one of most iconic and coveted trophies in all of sports. Unlike other sports where a new trophy is made every year and awarded to the champion, there is only one singular Stanley Cup, which has the names of the winning players engraved into it each year. The champion then gets 100 days in the offseason with the cup, where it is often passed around between players, coaches, and members of the organization. Players have gotten creative in how to spend their day with the Cup: it's been used to baptize children, it's fed a Kentucky Derby winning horse, it's hiked to the top of the highest point of the Rocky Mountains, it's been overseas, it's gone clubbing, it's been on Jet skis, it's been on a roller coaster, etc.
Winning the Cup is an arduous and grueling journey. Players must endure an 82 game season and then win 4 best-of-7 playoff series'. Their bodies typically take a significant beating between the number of times they're slammed into the boards and the number of times they sacrifice themselves to block a puck from reaching the net, and of course there's also the fighting. But reaching the mountain top and winning one truly cements oneself in hockey immortality, quite literally by having your name inscripted on the trophy forever.
#3. NBA
I will go on record saying I think the best athletes in the world are NBA players. They possess the rarest combination of size, speed, and athleticism there is with their blend of height, strength, quickness, leaping ability, coordination, acceleration, etc.
While it is still a team sport, the NBA is a league of superstars that truly focuses on the individuals. It's become so much about the storylines of the best players pursuing greatness and trying to create a legacy of their own. And it's fair to say many of the most iconic athletes were basketball players like Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Shaq, Steph Curry, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, etc. So much of the allure was seeing superstars go head to head in the Finals with a championship on the line and watching them go shot-for-shot punch-for-punch in the final minutes of crucial games.
I remember that combination of individualism and team was a big part of the reason I wanted to pursue basketball as my main sport in the first place. In football you're wearing a helmet and in baseball you can be way out in left field, but basketball was a sport where it felt like the fans were truly on top of you and you were able to show your face and image. I liked that it was a team sport, but at the same time an individual could take over a game. Watching The Last Dance on Netflix has been a perfect example of this: Michael Jordan ultimately needed Scotty Pippen and Dennis Rodman, but in the last two minutes of games when the result hung in balance, Jordan turned into this superhero that demanded the ball and put the team on his back and willed them across the finish line.
While I definitely do miss being in Tampa sometimes and attending Bolts and Bucs games regularly, it has been a lot of fun to finally be living in a city with an NBA team in the Magic. I think this is an exciting time for them with the young nucleus of up and coming players and what they are building, and I am intrigued to see where it goes from here.
#2. College Football
Saturdays in the Fall trump Saturdays the rest of the year. My wife knows as much as anyone how much I love waking up on a Saturday morning after completing a work week, making myself a cup of espresso, grabbing a blanky, and watching College Gameday before settling in the Q Cave for a full Saturday slate. Even pre-adulthood, I still have fond memories from my 5 years at FSU of waking up on a gameday and feeling the buzz around campus and going tailgating with friends before heading into Doak for some truly memorable games.
Part of what makes college football so special is the fact that it's rooted in tradition. Obviously my favorite is Osceola riding Renegade and planting that flaming spear at the 50 yard line as the Warchant echoes through the stadium, but other universities have a great traditions of their own like Ohio State's dotting of the "i", Clemson's touching of Howard's Rock before running downhill onto the field, Notre Dame's touching of the "Play Like a Champion Today" sign, or all the ones that utilize animals like Auburn flying a War Eagle over its field, or Colorado's running of the Buffalo, or Oklahoma's "Boomer Sooner" tradition where two white ponies pull a covered wagon around the field, or all the music based ones (outside of the many great and iconic fight songs) like Virginia Tech's "Enter Sandman" intro or Wisconsin getting hyped to "Jump Around" before the 4th quarter.
We could also talk about the storied rivalries of the sport like the Iron Bowl (Alabama/Auburn), The Game (Ohio State/Michigan), the Red River Shootout (Oklahoma/Texas), the World's Largest Cocktail Party (Florida/Georgia), the Army/Navy game, and of course FSU/UF and FSU/Miami. There's also all the epic stadium names like The Horseshoe (Ohio State), The Big House (Michigan), Happy Valley (Penn State), The Swamp (Florida), Death Valley (LSU and Clemson), The Bounce House (UCF), The 12th Man (Texas A&M), Camp Randall (Wisconsin), and many others.
What also makes College Football so special is the importance of every regular season game. Expanding to the 12 team playoff does create a little more margin for error, but before this upcoming year a team cotyuld afford no more than a single loss, with many teams needing to go undefeated to secure a spot.
#1. NFL
